Remarketing: Hard Sell or Easy Money?

July 27, 2012

Remarketing(or Retargeting) has seen increased conversation on Twitter recently. After viewing a introductory webinar, I Using traditional paid search techniques, marketers have essentially accepted the stance of “It’s ok if 90-95% of my clicks don’t convert”. With Retargeting, marketers have an opportunity to capture a larger share of those bounces. According to Google,“Remarketing lets you show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse the Web.” Using their platform, you could tag any product page on your site, create an AdWords campaign, and display targeted messages(banners, rich media ads) to visitors who previously clicked onto your (or similar) pages on the Display Network.

For example, let’s say your website had a page devoted to video game systems. By creating an “Xbox 360” or “Nintendo Wii” tag and adding it to that page, visitors who clicked and did not make a purchase would then be “cookied” and served special ads you create to entice them to come back. These offers would appear whenever the visitor surfed associated websites that are part of, in this example, DoubleClick (Google’s Ad Exchange).

It is extremely important to capitalize on any kind of traffic your site receives. Click Through Rate (CTR) is a valuable metric, showing how many impressions have converted into clicks to your site, & remarketing allows for the effects of low click through rates to be reversed. If you can do that simply by adding tags to your site, then you should seriously consider it.

There are some heavy industry-related terms in here. Let’s break it down a little. A demand side platform, according to CrowdScience.com, allows advertisers and brands to buy audiences rather than specific website ad placements through technology called real-time bidding. The DSPs use behavioral targeting data, collected from cookies and data exchanges, to identify audience segments. The advertiser then uses that targeting data to define what kind of person they want to target with their advertising and how much they are willing to pay per impression. Then the DSP bids on the ad impressions using that advertiser’s criteria and budget, and serves the ads.

This option is ideal for search marketers because it targets users on a keyword basis and operates within a transparent bidding system. It will deliver your ads to users who have searched on your keywords within the last minute, day, week or month. This seems like a great option to consider, especially if you have optimized your campaign for bounce rate in the past. This can help you to retain some of those missed opportunities.

According to the press, this is a highly valuable option. Clix Marketing’s John Lee wrote, “Remarketing is available. It is super targeted. You will only show ads to people who have been to your site or a specific page or completed a specific action…. I promise you, remarketing in AdWords is super easy to set up and I think you’ll be pleased with the results!” Howie Jacobson of VitruvianWay.com wrote “Remarketing done well can make you seem ubiquitous, like a giant billion-dollar brand, even if your ad budget is a couple of hundred bucks a month. Because you’re only ubiquitous for the much targeted and highly qualified people who have already visited your site, and didn’t convert on their initial visit.”

Remarketing could be a powerful option for an advertiser currently developing their PPC strategy to consider. Take some time to research this on your own to determine if this is a viable option for your business.